1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a user equipment (UE) adapted for automating discovery, selection and connection to one or more target networks, and more particularly to a method of storing, extracting and evaluating network selection policies and local operating environment conditions for resolving network selection prior to select an appropriate target network.
2. Description of Related Arts
With more smart computing devices overwhelming the digital industries these days such as smartphones and tablets, have increase the demand for ubiquitous and spontaneous mobile data access by mobile subscribers. Hence, this scenario requires intelligent network discovery and selection with enhanced mobility support in maintaining a good mobile connectivity experience. However, the unpredictable, simultaneous and sporadic connectivity behaviors of mobile subscribers have caused fluctuation in mobile data demand and congestion within the mobile network. Therefore, the increasing demand to control and relieve mobile network congestion has spurred the development of various mobile data offloading solution in the wireless telecommunication industry.
Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has defined Access Network Discovery and Selection Function (ANDSF) in 3GPP TS 23.402 “Architecture enhancements for non-3GPP accesses” as a method for communication service providers to influence the discovery and selection of target wireless network in user equipment by propagating network policy from a network policy control server to user equipment. A network policy contains information such as the preferred type of wireless network available in a location, the preferred time and/or location to use such wireless network and the network traffic routing rules. This mechanism may allow offloading of data traffic from cellular network to home and/or enterprise network and reducing the congestion in cellular network. However, the method to evaluate network policy against local operating environment conditions for appropriate network selection within the user equipment is yet undefined.
Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has defined 3GPP TS 23.234 “3GPP system to Wireless Local Area Network Interworking (I-WLAN)” as a method to allow user equipment to access mobile data services from a wireless local area network (WLAN). However, this method neither describes under what circumstances should the user equipment use I-WLAN nor a method within the user equipment to activate and deactivate I-WLAN function.
International Publication WO 2010/037422 A1 disclosed a policy server operates to configure differentiated services over multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) in a communication network. The policy server in the cited publication enables the definition and deployment of a customer policy, a network policy and a mapping policy. The policy server is arranged to create a group of MPLS tunnels, and associate the tunnels to the mapping policy and the customer policy. The customer policy includes a tunnel group identifier and a tunneling mode, and maps customer traffic to MPLS tunnels. The policy server translates the customer policy, the network policy and the mapping policy into device specific commands, and then deploys the device specific commands to the network interfaces of the affected network devices. The cited publication however does not disclose a method for a mobile device to seamlessly discover, select and switch network connection.
International Publication WO 2009/149761 A1 disclosed a method of transparently monitoring targeted signal flows, comprising directing control plane signals according to policies associated with the control plane signals through a routing point in a network to a signalling monitoring point in the network. Then the method further comprising substituting bearer flow address information contained in the control plane signals with bearer flow address information of a media processing point in a manner causing subsequent bearer channel flows associated with the control plane signal to be directed to the media processing point from the routing point by destination based routing. However, the cited publication does not provide a method for seamlessly discover, select and switch network connection by taking into considerations such as cellular network identifier, time and location of a user equipment and the state of the candidate target network.
US Patent Publication 2007/0268516 A1 disclosed an automatically policy based network device configuration and network deployment. The cited publication provide system, device, method, computer program and computer program product which associated with the auto configuration and deployment of any number of network devices such as wireless network switches and access point coupled to the network switches. The method starts with activating the device, sending a configuration data set request massage from the requested device, the request including requester information. Then receiving the configuration data set request by a manager system coupled with the network. Then the manager system selecting device, and communicating the selected or generated configuration data set to the requesting device. Finally the requesting device receives the selected or generated configuration data set and loading the configuration storage within the device. However, the method in the cited publication does not disclose a method within user equipment to use configuration data set for seamless network discovery, selection and switching.
Accordingly, it can be concluded in the prior arts that there exists a need to provide a method integrated to a user equipment such as network computers and mobile devices in implementing specific mobile data offloading solution to enable a handsfree mobile connectivity experience by automating network discovery, selection and switching.